On the recommendation of his future wife, Alice Székely-Kovács, Bálint read Sigmund Freud's "Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie" (1905) and "Totem und Tabu".

That year Bálint moved from Manchester to London, where he was attached to the Tavistock Clinic and began learning about group work from W.R. Bion; he also obtained the Master of Science degree in psychology.

In 1949 Bálint met Enid Flora Eichholz, who worked in the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations with a group of social workers and psychologists on the idea of investigating marital problems.

[5] Lacan wrote (almost approvingly) that 'Michael Balint has analysed in a thoroughly penetrating way the intricate interaction of theory and technique in the genesis of a new conception of analysis...[using] the catchphrase, borrowed from Rickman, of a "two-body psychology"'.

[6] On that basis, Balint thereafter explored the idea of what he called '"the basic fault": this was that there was often the experience in the early two-person relationship that something was wrong or missing, and this carried over into the Oedipal period (age 2–5)'.

'Therapeutic failure is attributed by Balint to the analyst's inability to "click in" to the mute needs of the patient who has descended to the level of the basic fault';[12] and he maintained that 'the basic fault can only be overcome if the patient is allowed to regress to a state of oral dependence on the analyst...and experience a new beginning'.

[15] Here as a rule interpretation remained 'entirely on the whole-person adult level...it was the intention to reduce the intensity of the feelings in the therapeutic relationship'.

Balint writes: "[...] for the philobat the world is structured by safe distance and sight, and for the ocnophil by physical proximity and touch.

The reaction of the philobat is what is generally called the heroic one: turning towards the approaching danger, facing it in order to watch it, keeping away from objects that offer false security, standing upright on his own.

In Balint's mind, people tend to regress into either one of these primitive mental states when faced with anxiety, and therein they express essential attachment experiences.

Balint suggests that the (male) acrobat may be thought of as enacting the primal scene when performing in a highly erect form on the tight rope, before eventually returning to mother earth, and the "beautiful young girl" awaiting him.